The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)

I really enjoyed the post. I reminded me a lot of this Youtube video( [VIDEO] ). I understand this is a comical post but as the son of a carpenter and understanding the profession decently well I would say these are none of the questions that would be asked of a carpenter. There are however many important questions a person would need to answer to be hired as a carpenter or more likely be able to join a union. There they would be able to get experience and training. Then the company the union carpenter work for already knows the skills and abilities they have and there is really no need for any interview. Any GC or sub asks for guys to do a job. The local sends them the qualified guys. Pretty simple actually.

> to appear utterly confident in his ideas and proposals I'm sure this clip has probably crossed your screen before, but I think that protagonist eventually realizes he has to out-BS the BS: [VIDEO]

> I really enjoyed the post. I reminded me a lot of this Youtube video( [VIDEO] ). Jesus, that's painfully real.

Or ask somebody to draw three lines on a whiteboard that are mutually perpendicular ([1]) [1] The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch), [VIDEO]

>If you did your job right, you have people that are much more experienced than yourself. "You hired me as your UX expert. I use A/B trials, prior trials, studies, and knowledge I've pieced together over the past 20 years." The question of "What are you even paying me for if you're going to ignore my advice?" is one I'd love to ask but fear getting fired for pointing it out. The alternative to micro-managing is asking for the impossible [0]. Which also happens frequently. I was once asked to make a transparent .jpg because .png are "too heavy". I had to explain how .jpg's work, tell them I could make it a .gif, but that the .png compressed better and would be more lightweight than the .gif. They insisted on the .jpg at which point I gave up, matched the jpg's background color to the blue background they had and saved it as a .jpg. Which turned out to still be a bigger file size than the equivalent .png. [0] [VIDEO]

Yes, this is a major con! Luckily my job involves a lot of R&D for the government, so UX and customer adoption isn't as important, though it still is important. Like other commenters have said, you need a balance. A workplace where everyone does not understand what the customer wants is crazy. A workplace where (almost) everyone does not understand any technical details of how to build what the customer wants is also crazy. Basically, you need enough people with enough domain knowledge to avoid this situation: [VIDEO]

Completely agree. They don't flub around trying to figure out and contextualize issues. They're able to both categorize the issue and the disagreement and present in ways that everybody can consume.* We're not all so lucky, though. Many times I've had to tell teams "This is going to sound right. Please forgive me because I'm concerned about X". You can't replace that kind of give-and-take with wordsmithing. The second skill I've noticed is to be a storytelling master. Great leaders tell engaging stories that emotionally draw you into their way of seeing things. *A problem occurs when the leader thinks they know what's going on but they are mistaken. In this case better leadership skills can actually lead to poorer overall results. I've seen good people with mission-critical ideas get "facilitated" out of them by well-meaning, nice, and intelligent people who don't know what the hell they're talking about and are unable to accept that fact. Obligatory link: [VIDEO]

These comments kind of reminded me of the comedy sketch, “The Expert” [1]. When nobody else will say no to an idea your meeting might end up sounding like that. I agree though that you should let people know the constraints and alternatives if you want to help forge a path ahead for their ideas. [1]: [VIDEO]